Configuring Contact Update Settings – InterAction® Administrator Answer Center

When a contact’s information is updated in the firm list, any users who maintain that contact in their user contact lists can also have their contact information updated.

InterAction offers users the ability to review the updates before applying them to their contacts or to automatically keep the contact up to date, which reduces the burden on the user because he or she does not have to manually review each update.

For a user’s contact to be updated, the user must contribute his or her contact to the firm list. When a user contributes a contact to the firm list, any information that the user does not choose to keep confidential is also contributed. This information can be updated from the firm list.

InterAction can also check for updates to the user’s confidential contact information. Users may choose to check for updates to their confidential information and review these updates. Although the contact’s information can be automatically updated, a user’s confidential information is never updated without the user first reviewing the update.

Configuring Contact Update Review Settings

For new contacts added to the firm list from the user’s contact list, you can set InterAction to do one of the following:

Automatically keep the contact up to date
Let the user review updates to the contact before they are applied

These settings are the default update settings for new contacts added to a user’s contact list. For each contact in his or her contact list, the user can specify if he or she wants to automatically receive updates. For example, you may set the default for a user’s contact list to let the user review updates. After the user has manually reviewed updates to a contact a few times, the user may realize that he or she is always accepting the updates sent to him. From the Web Client page where the user reviews updates to a contact, the user may choose to automatically accept all future updates for the contact.

Additionally, users can manage the contact review settings applied to their contacts in the following locations:

On the My InterAction page, users can choose their contact review settings under New Contact Defaults.
When adding or editing a contact, users can choose how updates are applied to the user contact.

You can administer a user’s update settings. For details see Reducing the Updates to Review.

Reducing the Updates to Review

For each user contact list, you can define update settings that apply to all of the contacts in the user’s contact list. These settings are intended to reduce the number of updates the user must review for contacts where the user has chosen to review updates before they are applied to the contact. You can select the following settings:

Automatically accept information where the user has none - InterAction compares each user’s contacts with the contacts in the firm list to determine where the user does not have information, but the firm does. For example, the user may not have a fax number for a contact. If the firm contact has a fax number, the user’s contact is automatically updated to have the fax number from the firm contact.
Automatically accept formatting updates - If contact information is changed on the firm contact to only update the formatting of the information, the updates can automatically be applied to the user’s contacts. For example, if an address is updated to use Street instead of St., the user’s contact is automatically updated with this change.

InterAction only automatically updates contacts if the user has not marked the field as confidential. Even if the user has no information in the field, if the field is set as confidential, the contact information is not automatically applied to the contact.

Configuring a True Two-Way Synchronization

To set up InterAction to have a true two-way synchronization between user contacts and firm contacts, choose an option to automatically keep all user contacts up to date. Then user contacts are always kept up to date with firm contacts. Because user contacts are kept up to date with firm contacts automatically, the following options do not display in the Web Client:

On the My InterAction page, users do not see the Review Contact Updates option under New Contact Defaults.
When adding or editing a contact in a user contact list, users do not have the option to choose to review updates to the contact.

Updating Confidential Contact Information

You can choose to have InterAction review the information set as confidential for a user contact and compare that information with the firm’s information. If the firm’s information for the contact is updated, the user can review the updates and choose to apply them to his or her contact. Information a user has chosen to keep confidential is never automatically updated.

Managing a User's Ability to Review Updates to Confidential Information

Depending on the needs of your organization, you can configure InterAction to do any of the following:

Allow users to determine if InterAction checks for updates to confidential information
Always check for updates to confidential information
Never check for updates to confidential information

Configure Default Update Settings for New User Contact Lists

Log in to InterAction Administrator.
From the main entity list, double-click User Contact List Configuration.
On the User Contact List Configuration dialog box, choose the Contact Update Settings button.

On the Contact Update Settings dialog box, choose the settings for contact update review.

To	Do This
Let users determine how updates are applied to their contacts	Clear the option to Automatically apply updates to user contacts for information not set as confidential and choose the contact update review setting you want to apply to new contacts by default.
Automatically keep all user contacts up to date	Select the Automatically apply updates to user contacts for information not set as confidential option.
Let users determine if InterAction checks for updates to confidential information	Select the option to Allow users to determine if they want to review updates to confidential information and choose the default confidential information update review setting you wish to use.
Always check for updates to confidential information	Clear the option to Allow users to determine if they want to review updates to confidential information and select Check for updates to confidential information and let the user review.
Never check for updates to confidential information	Clear the option to Allow users to determine if they want to review updates to confidential information and select Do not check for updates to confidential information.

When finished, choose OK.

Configure Contact Update Settings for a Single User Contact List

Log in to InterAction Administrator
From the main entity list, double-click User Contact List.
On the Manage User Contact List dialog box, select the user contact list you wish to change settings for and choose Edit.
On the Edit User Contact List dialog box, select the Contact Update tab and modify the contact update settings.
When finished, choose OK.

Configure Contact Update Settings for All User Contact Lists

Log in to InterAction Administrator.
From the main entity list, double-click User Contact List Configuration.
On the User Contact List Configuration dialog box, choose the Contact Update Settings button.